Kinder Trespass - Community Play Plans ::

Community Play - Planning Stage

High Peak Community Arts will be celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Kinder Trespass with an original community play 'On Common Ground' created and presented by local people. There are plenty of opportunities for people to take part in the play.

On Common Ground will be a play that tells a story of the history and potential future of the Peak District. Through an exploration of time past and time to come a version of the time present will be discovered.

At the heart of On Common Ground will be a celebration of a courageous act by a group of ordinary people that led to the freedom to walk in the countryside we enjoy today: the mass trespass on Kinder Scout in 1932.

“We will be working with young people and community groups creating songs and stories reflecting the importance of the Mass Trespass and how it is relevant today," said Jill Turner from High Peak Community Arts, “We would love people to come forward and be part of this fantastic project about their local heritage, and its importance in the bigger picture of access to our environment.”

Community Involvement

What else will On Common Ground be? There isn’t much more to say about the story at the moment, because one of the most important things about the community play is that it has not been created yet. But On Common Ground will not be a conventional play, taken from a bookshelf and presented by an acting company. On Common Ground will involve the stories people from the Peak District tell about their lives and the place in which they live. There are many ways stories can be presented and On Common Ground will involve as many of these as possible including music, song, dance, poetry, photography, film and more.

There is a writer; a performance director; and a musical director. What is needed now is a group of people who live in the Peak District who want to get involved in the creation and presentation of On Common Ground.

How to Get Involved

If you are 16 years or older, want to be involved in creating and presenting the story of On Common Ground, and can commit some time to the project between now and the performances in July then High Peak Community Arts want to hear from you. Please contact Jill or David - telephone 01663 744516 or email mail@highpeakarts.org.

Musical Director - Aidan Jolly The first meeting for people wanting to get involved in On Common Ground will be 7.00 – 9.00pm on Tuesday 27th February at Sett Valley House off Market Street, New Mills.

The evening will be an information exchange and open workshop to explore ideas.

If you have a interest in acting, singing or playing music, movement and dance, writing (stories, poems or songs), story telling or would like to develop skills in these areas, or have skills in other areas that you think could be used to tell a story, we would really like to meet you at the first workshop.

Further workshop sessions will be held on Tuesday evenings in March and April.

Check out the blog page of Musical Director Aidan Jolly

The play is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Their regional manager Emma Sale said: "This play will involve lots of people in the community and encourage them to reflect and celebrate a local event, which had such long term effects on the fabric of British life. The present public debate includes issues such as responsible access to land, management of the countryside and environmental sustainability. Such issues are at the cutting edge of green tourism and continuing access to heritage, and this play will has the potential to create thought-provoking and original ideas."